Finishing a project is hard work. It requires focus, determination, foresight, and confidence. Seth Godin calls it shipping, a fitting term, signifying your project has left the building and is ready to be picked apart. It’s the time at which you’re no longer tinkering with a side project and your work is ready to be judged. We published our first 3 episodes of The Epic Day Outdoors Podcast yesterday and iTunes accepted them, we shipped for the second time in Epic Day history. The first was when we officially launched the website and asked people to come see it, judge it, use it, and ultimately pay us for using it (only 2 have happened thus far).
Until a project is shipped and you’re working on it behind the curtains it is only a side project and you’re just tinkering with it. Until it is out in front of people and your eyeballs aren’t the only ones on it, it’s not a valid business or idea. Once that side project is revealed and your masses are notified with your bullhorn (aka Facebook) that you have finished, that’s when the hard part begins.
Many people don’t ship because they do not want to be scrutinized. They do not want their efforts to be judged. What if their project sucks? What if it flops? What if they missspelled something? What is my best effort wasn’t good enough? What if people think your idea is stupid? People will break your project down, they will assess it, and some will try to break you down. 99% of the time those are the ones who never ship themselves.
Shipping does two very important things, two things that everyone in business needs to experience.
1.) Gives you practice – Many people don’t ever ship, they don’t know how to finish projects. They don’t know how to focus until the end and put the finishing touches on something. Or even worse, they finish and then they tweak it to death and ruin what they created because they were so afraid of imperfections. The most important part is that you get practice at having your work on display for the world to see. Get practice at taking criticism, good and bad.
2.) It builds confidence – When you ship often you get better each time: giving yourself deadlines, putting extra hours in, going down those rabbit holes (upcoming post), being humble enough to ask friends & mentors for help, learning to be more creative through distractions and music and books.
I learned a saying while selling furniture that I’d preach to my guys, “The more you sell, the more you sell.” This referred to the amount of referrals and return customers you would get from making sales, but also the confidence and practice in those prior sales to make future sales easier and larger; encouraging them to become masters at their craft of furniture sales. That same mantra is applicable here:
“The more you ship, the more you ship”
